


the sad scientist's kind daughter, an observation by Bodhi Rook

by ninemoons42



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Male-Female Friendship, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rogue One - some of them live, Rogue One Spoilers, Spoilers, mention of Galen Erso, partly canon-compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-14
Updated: 2017-01-14
Packaged: 2018-09-17 09:38:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9317009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: Bodhi Rook has, honestly, no idea how he managed to survive Scarif.And now he'd be overwhelmed by the after-effects of everything that's happened since his break with the Empire, except that he thinks he has no one to turn to.Enter Jyn Erso.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [johanirae](https://archiveofourown.org/users/johanirae/gifts).



> I recently asked for fic prompts over on my Tumblr and my dearest Johanirae obliged me with this one, which was just so perfect and sad and lovely that I could have actually kept on going forever. I still might though haha.

His hands are misshapen lumps of bandage and bacta and broken bones, and he doesn’t trust the medical droids who are quietly buzzing around his bed in the medcenter, but at least they’re not paying attention to him so maybe he can shiver quietly in his corner and they won’t notice or at least glance in his direction.

And also, how does that even work –- he’s going to keep the use of his hands. He’s not going to be quietly, ah, dispatched, just for having the audacity to, one –- join the Rebel Alliance; and two –- come back alive from a mission on which he and the others had basically gone rogue. They’re not going to be giving him any medals BUT they’re going to make sure that he stays alive. That he’ll live to fly another day.

Thinking of the others makes him wince. All those people they lost on the beaches of Scarif –- he doesn’t want to figure out how he made it out alive, how Jyn and Cassian and Chirrut and Baze made it out alive. But they’ve lost Kaytoo, and Melshi, and Tonc, and too many other good soldiers. Too many lives given and for what? Alderaan still got blown up by the Death Star. They were too late to save Princess Leia Organa’s home.

He swears, quietly, because he still doesn’t want to draw attention –- but he swears, and he weeps, and someone’s sticking a hand and a mostly-clean rag into his blurred line of sight and he takes the rag. He wipes away the snot and the tears and the remaining traces of blood from the broken scabs on his face.

“Bodhi,” says a kind and ragged and ruined voice, and he trusts that voice, which is why he doesn’t look up –- he just leans into the warmth of her.

Jyn.

Who had burned with vengeance and hope and who’d led this mad mission. They had all been swept along in her wake. Cassian, and the Guardians, and –- she was here. She was comforting him.

How could she do that?

“I’m sorry,” he says, and he feels the tears pricking along in the corners of his eyes again. “You –- your father –- I’m so sorry –- ”

He searches the memories he still has left. Something to give her, because she deserved it.

“He kept singing songs about stardust,” he whispers into Jyn’s shoulder, soft and padded with too many bandages and not enough bacta. “I never knew what he was on about. But he’d collect songs, he’d look for them all over the holonet, he’d look for songs with the word _stardust_ in them and he’d learn them by heart. He’d sing them. Always when he was mostly alone. I guess I didn’t count to him –- ”

“Stop right there,” Jyn says.

He looks up.

The smile on her face is rough around the edges. Tear-tracks glittering on her cheeks.

“He wanted you to hear the songs,” she says. “He wanted you to know.”

Conviction shines in every line of her.

“He wanted to remember you,” he says, quietly. “All those years of –- lying and hiding and doing what he was doing.”

“Which was complicated and hard to understand. But he did it for –- for my sake, for us and for the sake of the galaxy. I can’t wrap my head around it. But maybe I will, eventually, and maybe I’ll forgive him.”

“I’ll wait for you to forgive me.”

Her arms are strong and startling, when she wraps them around him. “You never did anything wrong. You made the choice to fight the Empire. You made the choice to defect. And without you, we couldn’t have done anything. So you have nothing to be sorry for.”

“I don’t understand.” He wants to hang his head in shame.

“You don’t have to,” she says, and she presses a kiss to his forehead, and when she limps away, he still feels shaky –- but he feels a little warmer, for her words.

**Author's Note:**

> I am also on tumblr [@ninemoons42](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/)!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] the sad scientist's kind daughter, an observation by Bodhi Rook](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13102032) by [ninemoons42](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42), [reena_jenkins](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reena_jenkins/pseuds/reena_jenkins)




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